'Death lawyer' Felos featured on educational cruise

Editor’s note: The reporter who brought Terri Schiavo’s plight to national attention back when no one else in the major media cared about the story, WND’s own Diana Lynne, has written the definitive journalistic book on Terri Schiavo’s life and death – Terri’s Story: The Court-Ordered Death of an American Woman.” It is set for release at the end of September, and is available now for preorder.

George Felos at press conference after Terri Schiavo’s death (courtesy: BayNews9.com).

George Felos, the “right-to-die” activist and lawyer who represented the husband of Terri Schiavo in the influential Florida case, is the featured teacher for a course focusing on end-of-life issues, offered on a Caribbean cruise for health care professionals.

Among the course’s objectives is to “address and ensure the patient’s right to die.”

The overall purpose of the course is “to examine the legal requirements for advance directives and discuss the professional’s role in the management of end of life care.”

Representing Michael Schiavo, Felos prevailed through years of litigation to secure a court order removing Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, resulting in her death by dehydration and starvation March 31.

Immediately after Schiavo died, Felos spoke to reporters repeatedly of the severely brain-injured woman’s “death process,” describing it as “calm, peaceful and gentle.”

In sharp contrast to his descriptions, a Schindler spokesman, Fr. Frank Pavone, who was in the room shortly before Terri died, said she “was obviously in deep distress and suffering.”

As WorldNetDaily reported, Terri’s brother Bobby Schindler characterized Felos as having “some infatuation with death” after hearing the attorney describe his sister as looking “beautiful” as she lay dying.

Virtually all other eyewitnesses described her as “gaunt,” “drawn,” “struggling” and “fighting like hell” for life.

One explanation for Felos’ comments is suggested in the attorney’s own 2002 book, “Litigation As Spiritual Practice,” in which the longtime volunteer hospice worker describes a psychic encounter in which he promised a vegetative patient he would “do everything in my power” to bring her life to an end.

Despite saturation press coverage of the Terri Schiavo case, Felos’ New Age spirituality did not emerged as an issue. But Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, described the case as a “clash of two very disparate civilizations – the Judeo-Christian civilization, which is based upon the sanctity of human life, and the neopagan, relativist, quality-of-life civilization.”

Added James A. Smith Sr., executive editor of the Florida Baptist Witness: “Both worldviews are in play in the Schiavo debate, and it’s long past time for the public to understand this.”

Felos said after Schiavo’s death he believed the case has led to “a family dialogue, a national dialogue and perhaps a worldwide dialogue.”

“Death is one of the last taboo subjects in our society,” he said. “One of her legacies may be that we finally have matured as a society and come to grips with this question and start to deal with it in a responsible matter.”